Education the area’s economic engine

While Wall Street melts down and generates more worries than profits, Long Island’s education economy is growing as schools develop and expand, employing thousands and generating business for other industries.

An area once known for its defense industry now has a thriving education economy.

Stony Brook University employs 14,000; Hofstra, nearly 6,000; Nassau Community College, 3,000 and Suffolk County Community College has nearly 3,000 on its payroll. BOCES employs thousands as well. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre’s 17,000 headcount includes thousands employed in the Long Island Catholic school system.

The Long Island Regional Advisory Council on Higher Education Economic Impact Survey for 2007-2008 found nearly 40,000 people worked full and part time for the nearly 20 institutions on the Island, which collectively have operating budgets totaling about $4 billion with nearly half spent on salaries.

Long Island Association chief economist Pearl Kamer said Long Island’s higher educational institutions support 133,000 jobs directly and indirectly through spending and have an almost $14 billion annual impact.

Schools pay for food, supplies, construction, equipment and garbage disposal, fueling other industries. Thousands of people stay in hotels and eat at restaurants when visiting students and attending homecoming and commencement. “All of that adds up for Long Island as a whole,” said Robert Scott, chief executive of Garden City-based Adelphi University.

Kamer said schools are partnering with companies on research that develops products. “The corporate-university partnership will help the nation’s businesses market innovations faster,” Kamer wrote in a study about education as an economic engine.

They’re also supplying much of the workforce for local companies. Of the 140 firms that hired Farmingdale State College graduates in 2006, 103 were on Long Island. “We educate the local workforce,” said Kathy Coley, a spokeswoman for Farmingdale, whose enrollment since 2000 increased 30 percent to nearly 7,000. The Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale has worked with more than 21,000 clients who invested more than $230 million in the area, she said.

Many Long Island schools are building dormitories to house and feed thousands of students. “Hofstra, Adelphi, [C.W.] Post, NYIT and Dowling were mostly commuter colleges,” Scott said. “Over the last several years, these institutions have built residence halls so more students from the region stay on campus.”

LIRACHE found colleges are investing about $800 million in projects already in progress and expect to spend $1.7 billion in capital projects through 2012.

Touro College’s Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center moved into a new $35 million, 180,000-square-foot facility. Adelphi built the Adele and Herbert J. Klapper Center for Fine Arts and the Alice Brown Early Learning Center. Hofstra is on a building binge, including plans for a 220-bed graduate residence hall. Hofstra and the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System are planning a new medical school.

Farmingdale’s $2.5 million dental hygiene care center opened this January and construction plans are underway for a $25 million student center with offices, a theatre and dining facilitates slated to open in 2009.

Stony Brook Southampton, in its second year, enrolled 300 full-time students and 400 overall including 150 living on campus.

Kamer said high gasoline costs could prompt more students to stay at home and study online. But even as they roll out their own online courses, schools downplay worries about losing students to online institutions.

“Students who come to Adelphi look for transformational experiences from studying face-to-face with other students and with professors,” Scott said. “I don’t anticipate that we are going to lose enrollment because somebody else offers an MBA online.”

The education sector, however, could face threats from a soft economy and tougher student loan requirements.

Scott said some schools, in response, discount tuition through merit awards not funded through scholarships.

“That is a slippery slope that can only lead to danger if you have to discount tuition a great deal to get enrollment,” Scott said.

And Long Island employment’s shift from big companies, such as Grumman, to smaller firms hasn’t helped schools.

“Small to medium-size employers are less likely to reimburse tuition,” Scott said. “That’s where the business growth has been. With all the bank consolidations that have taken place, I know there has been a reduction in the availability of tuition reimbursement.”